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Jill Abramson addresses N.Y. Times firing

By Dylan Byers

07/15/14 04:17 PM EDT

Jill Abramson says she did not read the media coverage about her firing from The New York Times, but instead relied on a network of friends — including Times columnist Maureen Dowd and New Yorker writer Jane Mayer — to provide her with important information.

"This is going to sound incredibly out of it, but I didn’t in real time read what was written about me and losing my job," Abramson told Cosmopolitan magazine in an interview published early Tuesday evening. "It was a survival mechanism. A lot of my friends [like Maureen Dowd, Michiko Kakutani, Jane Mayer, Ellen Pollock] were like my medieval food tasters. They read, and if I really needed to know something, they would tell me."

Abramson's interview with Cosmopolitan (now live) was conducted last month and offers her most extensive remarks to date about her abrupt termination from the Times, as well as her thoughts on journalism, her own future and Hillary Clinton's possible presidential bid. Abramson will also sit down for a live interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News on Wednesday and with Katie Couric of Yahoo News on Thursday.

In the interview, Abramson addresses the Times' decision to fire her over management issues and criticizes a 2013 POLITICO report about those issues as "a hatchet job."

"What [New York Times publisher] Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has said publicly is that he had problems with my management style," Abramson said. "The whole issue of how women’s management styles are viewed is an incredibly interesting subject. In some ways, the reaction was much bigger when POLITICO ran this hatchet job on me [the profile by Dylan Byers called her 'stubborn,' 'condescending' and 'uncaring']. If there is a silver lining, it was the giant reaction from other women journalists. These women editors at the Chicago Tribune, who I have never met, sent me flowers after that article."

Abramson also said, as she has previously, that she cried upon reading the POLITICO article.

"I did cry after reading [that] article about me in POLITICO. I don’t regret admitting I did," Abramson said. "The reason I wanted to do this interview is that I think it is important to try to speak very candidly to young women. The most important advice I would still give — and it may seem crazy because I did lose this job I really loved — you have to be an authentic person. I did cry. That is my authentic first reaction. I don’t regret sharing that."

In the wake of Abramson's departure from the Times, Sulzberger said that he fired Abramson after she proved unable to improve upon problems with her management style, which had been the subject of complaints by her colleagues.

“During her tenure, I heard repeatedly from her newsroom colleagues, women and men, about a series of issues, including arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues,” Sulzberger said. “I discussed these issues with Jill herself several times and warned her that, unless they were addressed, she risked losing the trust of both masthead and newsroom.”

Sources with knowledge of the reasons for Abramson's termination also told POLITICO that Sulzberger fired Abramson after concluding that she had misled both him and chief executive Mark Thompson during her effort to hire a new co-managing editor. Abramson had also sought higher compensation from the Times after learning that her annual salary was less than that of her male predecessor, Bill Keller, according to these sources.

The Cosmopolitan interview, which the magazine decided to publish because of Abramson's other media appearances, did not go into detail about the circumstances that led to her ouster.

Abramson is currently scheduled to teach an undergraduate course at Harvard University in the fall. She told Cosmopolitan she's also been approached by other newspapers about a job but isn't ready to make a move.

"A lot of news organizations have approached me. I know I don’t really want to run something again right now," she said.

The piece also included some remarks by Abramson about Hillary Clinton.

"I met Hillary Clinton the first time in 1978," Abramson told the magazine. "I was writing for a political consulting firm, and Bill was running for governor and was one of the firm’s clients. I went to Little Rock for two weeks to gather material. I was impressed that Bill Clinton had this very smart lawyer wife and this very brash woman as his top political lieutenant, Betsey Wright. Later, I went to work as editor of American Lawyer, and I relied on Hillary as a source. Anytime I was calling her for her own expertise, she was fantastic, friendly and helpful. But as first lady and as a candidate’s wife, she was sometimes angry at me and at some of the stories I wrote. Both [Bill and Hillary] have first-class minds, and that is a great building block for a successful presidency. I think he was a successful president, and I think she would be too."